I’m on vacation this week. Yesterday, I spent a good chunk of the day trading in my old ’05 Dodge Grand Caravan on a new truck.

I had certain criteria I wanted to satisfy; in no particular order:

Good A/C (it reached 102.5 °F on the thermometer yesterday).

Seating for at least four.

Automatic Transmission.

Good Gas Mileage for that class of vehicle.

Got to have a 2″ receiver hitch (I got them to throw this in at no charge).

Payments and length of term had to fit within specific parameters.

I bought a Chevy Colorado 4-door pickup. It’s pretty nice, and should give me good service for quite some time. It can seat four adults and two children (if they all like each other a lot), and is rated for up to 25 mpg. In doing my research, I found that this was about as good as it gets in the world of pickup trucks.

The old van was becoming expensive to maintain. At some point, you just have to look at costs vs benefits. The new truck should be trouble free for the next few years, and it has a warranty. I went ahead and sprang for the 100,000 mile extended bumper-to-bumper warranty, which should protect me against some of the costs I had incurred on the old van, as this one ages.

Interesting. I find, as I get older, that while I admired the Corvettes in the showroom, I have no faintest desire to actually own one. It might be fun to borrow one for half a day, to see Texas Grandma’s face when I showed up with it…